Let's be better strangers
"It sounds downright ridiculous."
He makes no effort to hide the expression on his face over being called a lord, and something in his chest claws against the inside of his skin, at his throat and tongue and skull with the idea that he will have responsibilities, that he will have to answer to this drunken Prince. The whole idea is preposterous - he'd as soon tear his own heart out and lob it, still beating, at the black stallion - but he soothes the seething anger with a quiet reminder that he absolutely will not try his hardest.
No, he will go where Obscene sends him, and he will be exactly who he has always been, and if it brings trouble to the Pampas, well, it's hardly his problem. It isn't as if he's the one in charge here; let Obscene and Aela deal with that. Wherewolf could be long gone before the consequences came looking for him.
Mollified, the beast in his breast smiles a smile that bleeds onto the buckskin's dark lips, one that is, at best, conspiratorial, but certainly not friendly. One that, with Prince's next question, freezes, becoming little more than a rictus grin.
It's complicated. Although, not really.
"She started it," he says simply, and that shouldn't really come as any surprise, because Aela is always scheming, always finding trouble; always starting trouble.
And isn't she at fault? She should not have gotten in his way that day. In the twisted alleys of his memory, a colt and filly are fighting on the broad heather plain of Nerine. He's turning to leave and the wicked little cat snatches his wing up in her teeth. His left wing. He remembers panic and rage, a dragon and an explosion echoing in his mind. He remembers they fought until she finally let go and the white noise faded with the scent of sweat and blood, and back in the Pampas, he hitches that wing a bit tighter to his side.
Why do he and Aela dislike each other so? It's simple. Although, again, not really, because that isn't the whole story. He does not, however, elaborate. She is too proud, too vain, too smooth, catching up on all his sharp edges. Who can be surprised they don't get along?
"You should watch your back with her, too. She's slippery, why else would her Mama name her Eel-ah?" The topic of Aela does not interest him, though, so he pauses only long enough to shake his head and chase away a bee buzzing too close to the golden dapples on his cheek before moving on.
"So what do you need me to do, exactly?"
@[Obscene] I've read this too many times and no longer know what is happening or what words are.
